The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, more commonly known as the New Poor
Law, is arguably the most notorious piece of legislation in British
history. Deeply controversial in its day, it has unsurprisingly
generated a dense and diverse scholarly literature ever since, yet one
in which the national capital has played a remarkably minor role.
Indeed, David R. Green’s study is the first to attempt to explore the
history of the Poor Law in nineteenth-century London in its geographic
and administrative entirety. One need not read far to understand why,
for the history of the Poor Law in London prior to and post 1834 is
enormously complex. Green is to be commended both for undertaking a
difficult task and for producing a study that is remarkably easy to
read, despite the intricacies of its subject matter. His study makes the
arcane history of poor relief in nineteenth-century London accessible
to the non-specialist, while simultaneously yielding significant
insights about this history for specialist scholars of poverty, policy,
and the nineteenth-century British state.